Sea cucumber is used in fresh or dried form in various cuisines. Most cultures in East and South East Asia consider sea cucumber a delicacy. Sea cucumber is also considered a valuable source of various substances that serve as natural health products and have the potential of being developed into pharmaceutical drugs.
There are several sea cucumber species in the North Atlantic and adjacent seas but only one, the orange-footed sea cucumber “Cucumaria frondosa” is currently harvested. It is one of the most abundant and widespread species of sea cucumber within the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. During the harvesting of sea cucumber, waste materials such as the head and viscera of the sea cucumber—hereinafter referred to as the “sea cucumber waste materials”—contain oils, which if extracted from the sea cucumber waste materials are useful for dietary and medicinal purposes.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,399,105 to Collin describes a method to extract sea cucumber oil from sea cucumber visceral material using a standard solvent extraction. Solvent extraction is a very efficient method and results in a substantially complete oil extraction. However, solvent extraction, while simple in principle, is relatively complex in operation. Solvents like hexanes that boil at fairly low temperatures are used since they are readily removed.
Unfortunately, most of these solvents are dangerous to handle, and the operation must be carried out in explosion proof facilities with appropriate safeguards being used for storage, handling, venting, discharge and/or disposal of the solvent materials. While solvent extraction is currently the preferred method utilized by many large cooking oil manufacturers, it is not currently widely used by fish oil manufacturers or manufacturers of dietary supplements of healthy food ingredients.
It is desirable to provide a method for extracting oil from sea cucumber material using an enzyme.
It is also desirable to provide a compound comprising oil extracted from sea cucumber material using an enzyme.